So That's What Happened to Sitcoms...

As we babysit some of my wife's cousins' kids, we get a good sampling of the tv shows they watch. The three that I have seen so far are: iCarly, Spongebob Squarepants, and Wizards of Waverly Place. Spongebob is, of course, the best. I had seen that before and having done a 5 foot tall pinata of him and one of Patrick as well, I was much more familiar with them.

iCarly is not so bad although it has elements to it that are borderline. She and her friend run a website called iCarly.com. And they get strange requests from people. Like, one viewer wanted her to show her tongue. And, another bit had them doing dancing while eating bananas. I certainly appreciate the creativity and the fun aspect that goes into it, but when dealing with the internet and little girls, it just seems like we see way too many bad examples of this sort of showing off to the world.

iCarly is pretty bad. The acting is mostly lame, but there is some appeal to it. There are a couple of elements which pull you in. She has an older brother who is a sort of guardian for her while her father is in the Navy. Parents are not in the picture, so I can see how that would draw the children viewers in. But, it is totally a cheesy sitcom. They just took the format straight from the eighties and went with it.

The Wizards show was absolutely deplorable. First of all, the characters are all a-holes to each other. I hate that. No one is likable at all. I can see why they left the parents out of the other show. The plot is that this family are all wizards and/or witches and the kids go to school while the parents are home trying to come up with witty rejoinders to continue the madcap zaniness of this totally original plot.

Back when Tina Yothers would make a smart-alec comment on Family Ties, we would let it go, because we knew that Michael J. Fox was there to comfort us. But there is nothing like that with these shows. We have plenty of Tina Yotherses. Sorely lacking in the Michael J. Fox category.

Oh well! At least the kids of today get to experience tv of yesteryear...

Fashion Update

I take a look at the new shorts, the plaid bermudas, and I shrug. I can do this. It is a look I was born for.

But I also have to laugh, because many of the guys with these shorts do not fit the bill. It's a nerdy look. I don't understand how they do not see it. Maybe they think they are going golfing or playing tennis. I suppose if they get a sweater, place it on their back and tie the arms in front of them, they could be mistaken as preppy. But, I am not seeing that.

I am excited to get a pair though...

Can You Go Over This Area Again?

I used to clean carpet. When a customer did not like the way the job was done, we had some pretty good built-in excuses.

"Well yeah, that is the traffic area... I can go over it again if you like." (Notice the excuse followed up by the true sincerity of a non put-out technician)

Or "That line you are getting under your door is called carbon-filtration. The air floats through there and the door acts as a sort of filter along with the carpet and the moisture." (This is a sort of weird phenomenon that we would see in some places, but not all.)

And "It looks like your carpet is polyester, not nylon." (I don't know if it was actually polyester or what. Some carpet just did not have any fluff to it. They would just get these wear-areas that were like nothing on earth. It was tough telling people that their carpet sucked. But it was even tougher to do the whole job again...)

My favourite was this one: "This spot keeps reappearing, because there is soap in your carpet. And, it looks like it has gotten into the padding underneath." (How could I know if it was in the padding unless I yanked up the carpet? We did do repairs, so I could have. That would have been calling my bluff...)

All these excuses equated to one thing. I have just spent an hour here and I do not want to be here anymore...

We would eventually get down there with our spot cleaner and a towel and work like crazy. And, I think that is all they wanted to see, because up to that point all they saw was us doing nothing but going over the carpet with a floor buffer and raking it.

The key to the whole thing was the carpet rake. It looked better than vacuuming. I knew a guy who moved some furniture, spit on the carpet, pronounced it sprayed, raked it and put the furniture right back. The rake fools all.

People always wanted their sofas and stuff moved so we could clean under it. It was never dirty. Sometimes a little dust, which, I guess if you want to pay us to vacuum your carpet, fine!

I remember having a lady sign a waiver once so we could move her tv. I had just taken business law, so I knew that it would not hold up in court, but the boss hung it up on the office wall anyway. Such a proud moment in small business negligence-avoidance.

I am really embarrassed by my behaviour back then. Like the fact that my voice would change depending on who answered the door. The woman got a nice high pitched hello, how are you. The men would get a professional sounding deep voice. I probably would have never noticed this except for the time someone came to the screen and I could not tell if it was a man or woman on the other side. I think I was confused on which voice to use, so I had to come up with a middle ground voice.

I loved seeing how people all across the county lived. Sometimes, it was so disgusting that we had to spend half our time picking up dog, cat, rabbit poop off the carpet before we could start vacuuming. Other times, the people were so rich that we were afraid to touch anything for fear they would sue our company for items more expensive than the whole franchise. Most of the time, people were nice looking upper middle class folk who had the same basic floor plan, same furniture, same off-white berber carpet.

I think next time the guys come out to clean our carpets I will insist they move the sofas...

Come on!

Why would David tell Michael anything in advance? And, why let him do a skit at the picnic? And who won the volleyball game?

Doggie Don't Don't

While I was bringing in piles of dirt on Saturday, my dog, F, got out. I have been really cautious about letting him out, because as far as I can tell, I have no authority over him whatsoever. He will not come when I call his name. He barely even acknowledges me outside the realm of the yard, so I have been dreading this day. He got out and he was gone. He could care less.

At first, I chased after him, pointlessly calling his name. He would go into people's backyards and since I was trying to value their privacy, I would wait. He would not even look at me. So, I thought: Screw it! I have work to do. So what if he roams the streets all day...

I went back to work on the dirt. After about 10 minutes, I looked up to a child crying and being comforted by her father. There was F across the street. Now, I do not think he did anything to hurt the child. (I asked just in case.) But, I did realize that he is quite a large dog. And, despite his good intentions to explore the countryside and lick people, he could be responsible for some inadvertent accidents. And since animals cannot be sued, I took it upon me to start the pursuit again.

It's a good thing I did, because he decided to go across the busier street. And, then into someone else's yard. And then near the horses. Into the gully. Into the field, through the barb wire fence and down the street.

I was angry, impatient and not looking forward to this sort of adventure. At a couple points I ran up hoping to get hold of him, but at the last minute, he would bolt. We kept going like this and he crossed the street again and went onto someone's property. As I looked around, it appeared that no one was home then, so I shut their gate behind me and went after F again.

As he went around the yard, it dawned on him that he was trapped. I could see a couple of possibilities for him, but I was not about to tell him. After a lap around, he looked beaten. He was also tired. He was not used to running that much.

At this point, I had him. And any amount of punishment would suffice. I could tell him what a bad dog he was as I exercise my authority over him. With a dog that big, a simple swat does not do the job.

But I also thought about my predicament. As a father, is this how I would react as my kid misbehaves? Am I going to get angry and tell them how bad they are? Do they have to know that my word is the law and that when they are disobedient, then I am there to crack the whip? I don't know. But I was not going to do that with my dog.

I decided to lay down, call him and make sure I was approachable. When he got close enough I patted his head and then slipped his harness on. I let him know that I was not mad, because at that point, I wasn't anymore. It was actually kind of fun. It helped me take a break from a rigorous day of yard work. We walked back to the house and I was happy about what I had learned. I think F and I were closer too, which seems kind of silly, but maybe we are better friends.

Now, we just need to figure out how to use that friendship to keep him out of the garden boxes...

My Socially Awkward Burden

My reunion is coming up and I have come to discover that two of my very good friends have no desire to go. So, I figured it was my duty to write about it and attempt to convince them (and others) that the reunion is important and should be attended. Okay, maybe not important. It is an event on the circle.

Now, let's go back to what school is. It is a place where one is forced to go as a kid in order to become assimilated into society. As part of that, one gets friends over the course of 3 to 4 years. When one is in grade school, friends are made, but the maturity is not there, so everyone is a friend. But then high school friends are different. The mentality is different. People are a little more accepting. Girls are getting hotter. It is more fun.

Except for the bullies. And the bullies one remembers the rest of their life. And hopefully, they do not show up to the reunion. I think the bullies represent what is horrible about reunions.

So, now fast forward 10, 20, 30, 50, 100 years ahead. The first thing that runs through my mind as the reunion approacheth is the idea that I suck and I have to suddenly make something of my life (or at least appear like I am). But then that makes me angry because I am going back to high school mentality. So I think: I have to conquer this. I need to go to my reunion because ...

And then I have to think of a good reason.

It comes back to the idea of: What would I want my ideal reunion to be like?

I would like to go back to the actual school and have a day (actually, it would have to be 4 days. Wait! With semesters, it would have to be 8 days. Sounds like Navin.) It would be nice to go in each of my classes and take a look around at all of the people who were in my classes. We could all sit in the seats we used to sit in. And, we could spend the day looking around and remembering. That might be a good simulation to set up somewhere online.

That would be so much fun, because I take my experience since high school and relate to the people around me differently. People are very interesting and everyone has something interesting to offer. Did we have that kind of patience in high school? Hell no. I was too busy dressing weird and coming up with strange projects to demonstrate creativity.

What else could we do?

I would like to go somewhere that would not be awkward. I think dressing up and going to a place that is all formal and stuffy reminds me too much of going to church dances as a kid. I understand that the purpose was to dance, have fun and make friends. But, I spent a lot of time not dancing, not having fun and I made only a couple friends. That was a ton of effort with very little profit. What can I say? I survived. I learned how to sit on the stage and stare at hot girls.

I want to do something that would actually be fun. Some sort of activity where we all get together and throw paint all over each other. Actually, that would be a little awkward. Maybe have a bunch of chess boards set up or some RockBand. Let's do something where we can see the talents people have. How about one gigantic talent show? A week long event. If you have no talents, you could figure something out in a week.

I don't want to not remember people. I don't want to be trolling around trying to look at who people are and feeling like I didn't get to everybody I wanted to. But then again I do that all the time. Every party I go to I come away thinking: Why didn't I talk more to those people? That would have been interesting.

This is not very convincing to my friends who I hoped would show up to this event to ease my burden. My socially awkward burden...

Doodie!!!

I did not really grow up going to a public pool. We went to my Grandparents' house. They had a pool and a trampoline and a big yard with old beat up cars in it. They had olive trees and 7-Eleven was across the street. The baseball park was next door. We only had to share the pool with a couple other kids. And many times we had friends come over. So, we were really spoiled.

So, the idea of a public pool is a little foreign to me. The most public I got was going to the beach. If we had to go to the bathroom, we were told to go out in the water. You can't really do that in a public pool. Of course, lots of kids were doing it last year. So much so that they had to close many of them down to clean it all out and keep everyone from getting sick.

I can still see that a public pool is fun and I will make the best of it for my little family, but boy! There is nothing like that memory of having a pool to go to all summer long. I can still picture it. Its size. Its shape. I had to clean it in later years. But it was a great swimming pool. That was a great house. I could go on and on about that place. Maybe I will dream about it tonight.